Archive for December 3, 2015

If you came across this title in our quarterly research report, The (Ir)relevance of Procedural Justice in the Pathways to Crime, the title alone might have surprised you. It surprised us too—so we decided to talk to the author for our second interview on recent procedural-justice research. As it turns out, the article doesn’t argue that procedural fairness isn’t important. In fact, as author Megan Bears Augustyn explained, procedural fairness is relevant to many offenders, and it is important for ethical reasons. But when it comes to increasing compliance and satisfaction, she says fair practices don’t have the same effect on everyone, at least in her study with adolescents.

Augustyn has researched adolescent behavior as well as procedural fairness, and she noticed that the effects of procedural fairness were not as strong among adolescents as among adults. She wondered if the results would break down differently for different types of adolescent offenders as well—those who start offending at an early age (usually driven by mental-health issues or problems at home) and those who don’t start offending until they are teenagers (often motivated by peer pressure).

Sure enough, Augustyn found that fair treatment didn’t have much of an effect on the early-onset offenders. Their reasons for offending were too complex to address by simply showing them respect and giving them voice. For the more limited adolescent offenders, however, fair treatment could affect attitudes and help curb illegal behavior.

Augustyn discusses this research and her conclusions in more detail in the interview linked below—available in both extended and edited versions. If you’d like to download the files, just right click the link, then click “Save target as.” Once again, the interview was done by Justine Greve (M.A., American Studies), a staff member with the Kansas Court of Appeals.—Steve Leben